Since the release to the public of lists of government officials and members of Congress who’d allegedly had dealings with alleged pork barrel scam ringleader Janet Lim Napoles, the scramble to clear names and deny, deny, and deny has been pure madness. One of the more notable of the names mentioned in these lists is Budget Secretary Florencio ‘Butch’ Abad.

The loyal staff’s boss: Budget Secretary Butch AbadIn a poignant article published on (where else?) “social news network” Rappler.com, Abad’s chief-of-staff Clare Amador went on a 1000-word emotional defense of her boss. Turns out, this blurb was originally posted on Amador’s Facebook account. Interesting, indeed, that Rappler would so quickly pick it up as worthy for exhibit on its venerable site.

Much of what Amador wrote was about what Abad says about stuff. Indeed, one could almost feel the struggle Amador may have gone through writing such an article — trying to come up with something with so little to work with. One Dereck Hann noted this in a comment he posted…

You should really be using more of what he has ACHIEVED, rather than what he talks or plans to do. From your writing, it sounds like he is one helluva talker. Why are you telling us how much he had to endure growing up? Every[one] suffers growing up.

It surprised me that you include a snippet about forgetting the password of a facebook account, not to mention forgetting what email address used to make it. That’s a glimpse of poor organization and perhaps lack of focus.

I’m not saying anything bad about him, but what I’m trying to say is, you probably shouldn’t have written this.

Abad, being one of the men of a President who won his office on the back of celebrity endorsements, should know by now that the words of an “unknown” (words used by Amador herself to describe, well, herself) are no match for the words of a celebrity like Napoles. Napoles had reportedly claimed that it was Secretary Abad who “taught her how to form foundations.”

In the unsigned affidavit, Napoles said she “bought” an existing foundation, the Philippine Social Development Foundation Incorporated, using the knowledge she supposedly obtained from Abad. Later, she set up several other foundations “to enter into agreements” with politicians.

Napoles claimed that she gave 40- to 50-percent commissions to certain senators and congressmen in exchange for their PDAF allocation.

Abad, of course, denied he had ever dealt with Napoles (a claim becoming increasingly familiar nowadays) “either as representative of Batanes, as Budget and Management Secretary, or as an official of any other public office that has been entrusted to me.” Furthermore…

Abad said when he was still a legislator, all projects he sponsored under his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) were “above board” and none was coursed through any bogus NGO.

Interestingly, Manila Times columnist Ben Kritz pointed out in a mid-2013 Get Real Post article that there may be some cause to believe that Abad may not be above using his position to curry favours for his favoured legislators…

Abad’s home district, incidentally, comprises the Batanes Islands, which have a population of roughly 15,000 (the country’s smallest province) and are represented in Congress by his wife Dina. While most Congressional districts receive between P70 million and P140 million in PDAF funds, Abad reportedly approved P800 million for his wife’s district at the end of 2011.

The plot thickens.

Indeed, Abad was apparently the architect of the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), what Inquirer columnist Conrado de Quiros described as “yet again another one of those lump-sum appropriations unheard of until he pulled it out of his hat.”

Abad had seemingly pulled the DAP out of his hat to (in de Quiros’s words) “precipitate growth” by way of funding Senators’ “favorite infrastructure projects”. The DAP was supposedly used to do this to the tune of P50 million on top of the conventional pork appropriations of each Senator in 2012. One will note that Senators Miriam Defensor-Santiago and Bongbong Marcos did not receive these allegedly DAP-funded appropriations. Both had voted in favour of former Chief Justice Renato Corona during his impeachment trial that year.

Hopefully, Clare Amador really knew what she was talking about when she wrote that rather touching plea in defense of her boss, Budget Secretary Butch Abad. For her sake. She need look no further than the fate of that other loyal chief-of-staff, Gigi Reyes for a few lessons on what ‘loyalty’ to one’s boss pays.

It is now like, when you shine a light in the dark; you find a group of cockroaches, running away fast in every direction. It’s thievery on a tremendous scale; done by Aquino, the Senators, Congresspeople, high government officials , etc…Aq

it is soooo ‘touching’ that the underling has defended her boss so passionately, But BUt BUT is he guilty of taking money or not? Does n e 1 care that Abad is a good boss?that his staff regard him well? He got P800,000,000.00 for his tiny province,that is governed by his wife, while other provinces get P100,000,000.00(that is $17,500,000.00 more, and the province is the smallest in the country!!! I smell a FUCKIN RAT, I do!) . it has been proven time and time again that the election process in the country only produces lying thieving weasels, EVERY TIME! it… Read more »

I like how we are expected to believe that a private citizen with no government rank or no official close ties with the government can have free reign of public funds without the knowledge and / or participation of high ranking government officials. I was born at night but not last night .

secretary abad should not hide behind the skirt or pants of anybody and do the explaining himself directly so he cannot say later on that he was misquoted or his words were taken out of context. you’re a big boy now mr. abad playing with mega bucks…

Thieves, liars, dumb and egoist are all leading this stupid nation. Woe to the Philippines. As long as the electorate do not use their brains in choosing their leaders, there is no hope for a better Philippines and they will remain the laughing stock and the basket case of Asia. I missed those days when we were the tiger of Asia, the second best economy and The center of health and education in SEA.

[…] that it has been revealed that no less than Budget Secretary Florencio Abad allegedly benefitted from the pork barrel scam, we can now understand why the budget for the PDAF kept going up every year. Abad’s 2014 budget […]

Why do they always have to highlight Napoles as the “mastermind” and “ringleader” of the pork barrel scam, while it is obvious that she is only tip of the iceberg? This is so irritating as they seem to say to the people that since Napoles is the mastermind, then the senatongs and tongressmen, the pwesident and his ilks are all just victims.

Because they(yellowtards/yellow zombies) still think that Aquino is only a “victim” when in reality, he is one of the masterminds of the PDAF and DAP scam.

The fact that he keeps sending paid stooges from the malacañang group to spread propaganda in sites critical of the current administration is already evidence that he’s paranoid of growing discontentment from the people.

cases questioning the constitutionality of DAP are still under SC consideration. your pronouncements against DAP are, at best, premature and conjectural. if SC decides that DAP is constitutional, you’d be red-faced and ashamed of yourself.

So — you require a highly questionable, extra-legal executive policy designed to redistribute taxpayers’ money according to the vagaries and caprices of Penoy Aquino to be tested by the entire legal system before it is discontinued. (A programme which has resulted not only in a colossal amount of waste but also outright plunder.) Yet you will dismiss outright any other plan of action formulated by other politicians as illegal or criminal without bothering to subject them to the same level of scrutiny.

Sorry to say, Mr Jacinto, that you missed the point. But that’s ok, as the Philippines is a nation of point missers anyway. So you’re in good company.

The point was that the DAP — a source of the pork that either gets stolen or gets used for motivating Senators to “cooperate” with Malacanang — is a creation of the Abad and, by command responsibility, BS Aquino himself.

As to the “constitutionality” of the DAP (albeit being beside the point), well, we’ll have to wait and see, do we? 😀

Julia Abad, chief of the Presidential Management Staff, and daughter of Budget Secretary Butch Abad recently posted on her Facebook page a statement in defence of her father. She writes that the public should not let allegations made by Janet Lim-Napoles “shake our belief that a reformist public service is possible.” She goes on to state “I am Julia Abad, government employee, wife and mother. And I am proud to tell you, Butch Abad is my father.” On the one hand, this sounds like a testament to the Abad family’s commitment to a tradition of public service. Considering Ms Abad’s… Read more »

[…] as Budget Secretary, Abad is seen by many as the architect of the notorious “Disbursement Acceleration Program” (DAP), the renowned beyond-audit-reach Malacanang slush fund allegedly used to finance the bribery of […]